It’s time to change how you’re recruiting manufacturing employees

Manufacturing talent acquisition teams need to evolve their recruiting strategy. Hiring teams are facing significant problems, but manufacturing talent acquisition continues to use the same tactics and strategies from 10 years ago.

The way most companies go about recruiting manufacturing employees is broken. It’s just not working.

Manufacturing is not perceived as a desirable career path:

Manufacturing was once considered a viable and good career path. But the modern workforce has a negative perception of working in manufacturing.

5% to 8.4% of manufacturing positions are going unfilled and the talent pool is seriously lacking in qualified candidates.

There’s a serious skills shortage among the candidates who are applying for manufacturing jobs.

70% of manufacturing recruiting leaders say that candidates don’t have the right technical or computer skills. Another 69% report that applicants lack problem-solving skills.

Lack of candidates is damaging businesses

It currently takes 70 days on average for TA teams to find and recruit skilled production workers.

A study by Accenture for the Manufacturing Institute showed an 11% loss in annual earnings for U.S. manufacturers caused by lengthy vacancies.

An inability to find talent is causing your company to lose as much as $3,000 per existing employee

The new 3 step model for recruiting manufacturing employees

Manufacturing companies need to:

Change the perception of manufacturing in the workforce

Build your talent pipeline in creative new ways

Support recruiting teams with new processes and technology

Employer brand is how to change the perception of manufacturing. Manufacturing companies need to build relationships pre-job search. Instead of recruiting think about building talent pipeline.

Build an employer brand in your community

Go out into the community and build relationships by giving value. Go into shop classes at high schools and colleges. Give workshops and presentations about careers in manufacturing.

That’s how you’ll create awareness. But you’ll also want to create an on-ramp for manufacturing careers.

Create an apprenticeship program for high school students, college students, and other groups. When you go to give your presentations use a text-to-apply shortcode as your call to action. Finish your presentation with “If you’re interested, we’ve got a great apprenticeship program. You can do it part-time after school, or after your current job if you’re looking to transition, we even have summer cohorts you can join. If you’d like to be considered – start your application process by texting this phone number. ###-###-####.”

Data from a Fortune 500 company showed that using text to apply instead of directing applicants to a career site can produce an increase in your pipeline of deskless candidates by up to 53%.

Use employee storytelling to build an employer brand online

Create content about your employees. Share their stories.

Here are ideas for storytelling content:

Feature an employee who made an important contribution and talk about that.

Feature an employee who completed your apprenticeship program showcase their journey.

Feature a story about an employee who has been with the company for a year or more. Have them share what they’ve learned.

Here are ideas for micro-content:

Take a photo of your team meeting and share it

Take a photo of an individual employee and share a fun fact about them

Creating storytelling content will make your manufacturing company an attractive place to work.

Social media has made it cheap, easy, and effective for manufacturing companies to build relationships with candidates through recruitment marketing.

Additional resources:

For more on recruitment marketing read our article on millennial hiring using recruitment marketing and AI.

Next, you need to get creative to generate a talent pipeline. You’re struggling with a lack of qualified skilled candidates. Why not create a program to generate them?

Start a paid apprenticeship program

Bradley Corp, a building materials company in Wisconsin started an apprenticeship program for high school students. They built a training facility on their campus, started engaging local high schools and sourced a talent pool.

They used this paid apprenticeship program as a source for skilled talent. An apprenticeship program changes perceptions about manufacturing as a viable career path and solves issues around a lack of qualified/skilled talent at the same time.

Expand your sources of talent pipeline

Bradley corp focused its training program on students, but they aren’t the only overlooked source of talent. Every year 250,000 service members leave the armed forces. Most of them don’t have careers or jobs lined up as they transition to the civilian world.

Marketing your apprenticeship program to overlooked talent pools like Military Veterans is a great way to give back to service members while also building a talent pool for your company. Data also shows that Military veterans stay longer at their companies. There are many great reasons to hire them.

As you expand into new strategies, support your recruiting teams with new partners and technology. Talent acquisition is going to need to dedicate hours to recruitment marketing and employer branding support. Expanding recruiting outreach and comms to various communities and groups through partnerships is also going to take hours from hiring teams.

Create partnerships with diverse organizations

Connect with companies like Shift, to develop talent from the 250,000 veterans that enter the civilian workforce each year. They have a marketplace of veteran candidates as well as a talent acquisition strategy consulting team that can help you to create and execute a strategy to hire more veterans.

Also, look to local community colleges and trade schools to build partnerships.

Scale your recruiting outreach and communications

Many of your ideal candidates for manufacturing jobs or apprenticeships aren’t located in major cities. They’re in small towns all over the United States.

Scaling your engagement to tap into talent pools across such disparate time zones and geographies isn’t possible without help. 80% of recruiters are overwhelmed and report they don’t have enough time in the workday to spend on needed activities.

Use AI recruiting to support your team

AI recruiting assistants are available 24/7 and can scale to support even the largest candidate pipelines. Conversational AI like Mya, can reach out and connect with thousands of passive candidates in minutes.

When Mya was deployed for a Fortune 500 retailer, it reached out to over 50,000 candidates. It converted over 10,000 of them into qualified interested candidates. It scheduled 3,600 candidates for phone screens and interviews with recruiters.

Best of all, Mya received a 9.8/10 candidate satisfaction score, candidates loved engaging with it.

Here’s my quick request.

Book a demo of Mya, conversational AI for recruiting will help you build your employer brand, make faster placements, and it’s been proven to improve recruiter productivity by 144%. Your team will have the time they need to execute the tactics I’ve shared in this article, the tactics manufacturing TA teams need to be successful at hiring.

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